G'day, G'day!!

We're currently in Alice Springs after our 3day red centre tour, flying to Cairns tomorrow evening (weds) before then flying onto Japan thursday morning. Hopefully this quick blog will wrap up what we've done in our last few weeks in Australia.

Going all the way back to when we were staying at Mission Beach as you have probably seen by the pics we decided to go white water rafting on the famous tully river. Its probably one of the best things we've done in oz. had a really good group/guide which helped aswell. both of us would definitely go rafting again.

Between mission beach and cairns we stopped at a croc farm which wasnt hugely exciting. not alot else to say about that really.

During our time in cairns we hired a car for afew days and drove up to cape tribulation which is situated in the daintree rainforest and is a world heritage site. all around this region there is lots of cool walks and exciting things to see. its a really beautiful area and on one of the walks we managed to see a python sleeping in the trees as well as other different types of trees/waterfalls and wildlife not normally seen.

On our way back to cairns we stopped overnight at a place called port douglas. Its a small wealthy town situated right on the sea and we were lucky enough to be there whilst the sunday markets were happening.

Back in Cairns we had a few more nights out to say goodbye to some people we had been travelling with up from the whitsundays, we chilled out alot and laughed alot at the 2 dutch guys in our room 'dave' and 'tim' not so dutch names. We had quite a while in cairns and I went and had another tattoo inked on which i had booked before we had left. its a polynesian design and im really pleased with it, its looks cool!! katie had decided that she wanted one aswell with me when she was drunk one night, but then when sober it doesnt seem like such a good idea!!! Big wimp! I also went go-karting with a few other lads putting them all to shame by setting the quickest time of the day even beating the instructors.

After Cairns we flew over to Perth to stay with Helga & Phil, a couple we had met through Alex Smithers' mum and dad. Perth was a really nice city and we managed to boat over to Freemantle to see the sunday markets there. It was so nice to have a proper bad and fluffly towels again!!! Katie was very excited by this. Unfortuately Phil was working on the rig so we spent our time with Helga and her Mum, who was staying with her for the week. We went wine and beer tasting plus went to a choc factory...yummy!!! we also went out for quite a few dinners, mainly italian. The leftovers were the next mornings breakfast, yum...ciao italia in the morning. We also went out for indonesian which was lovely. Helgas mum also cooked us thai and then meatballs one other nights. The stay was lovely and a lot of fun, something different than the east coast and also a break from the backpacking that we have become so used to. Sadly we had to leave though.

Flying from Perth straight into Alice springs to do our Red rock 3 day tour. Which whilst i was away my Friend Jenna had a beautiful Baby girl called Kadi Emma Newman. CONGRATULATIONS to you both, she looks amazing and i cant wait to meet her.

The red rock tour was amazing, we got to see Uluru, Kata Tjuta (the olgas) and Kings Canyon. The first day was a long drive and an early morning. When we got to the national park we went straight to The olgas and did a hour and a half trek through them. We then went on to see the not so much of a sunset over Uluru. A bit of a shame that the sun wasnt appearing but it was still beautiful to see it from a distance. That night we got to camp and slept out under the stars in swags and no sign of dingos which we were happy with. The next day we went on to do a sunrise base walk around Uluru which was amazing to see Uluru change colours as the sun was rising. It was about 9km all around. Then after that we had some cultural talks then off to the Kings Canyon campsite. We were supposed to sleep out in swags again but with the dingos everywhere and a storm in Uluru we were not that keen on being woken up by the rain so we ventured off to a tent!!! The 3rd day we did a 3 and a half hour hike up and down kings canyon, it was amazing up there, so beautiful and breathtaking. After that it was the long drive back to alice springs which is where we are at the moment, which ash explained at the beginning.

Australia has been good and after 3 months here i think we are ready to leave and get a culture shock in Japan. New Zealand and Oz were both awesome places to see and we are so glad we have done them but i think now is when we start travelling properly with Japan and south east asia. I think the culture shock is going to be cool. So we are really looking forward to flying to Japan on thurs off to see Ash's cousin Ben and his wife Izumi.

So it is goodbye from Oz. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx